A group of caimans sit on the banks of the almost dried up Bento Gomes River in the Pantanal wetlands near Pocone, Mato Grosso state, Brazil, Wednesday, November 15, 2023. Amid the high heat, wildfires are burning widely in the Pantanal biome, the world's biggest tropical wetlands. (Photo by Andre Penner/AP Photo)

Reflected in an ornament, a reporter takes a photo of the White House Christmas Tree in the Blue Room during a media preview of the holiday decor at the White House in Washington, U.S., November 29, 2016. (Photo by Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

A girl lights a candle as she marks the anniversary of 2015 Nepal earthquake, at Boudhanath stupa in Kathmandu, Nepal April 25, 2017. (Photo by Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters)

Divers perform during a Christmas-themed underwater show at the Aqua Planet 63 aquarium in Seoul on December 8, 2022. (Photo by Anthony Wallace/AFP Photo)

In the spring of 1965, within weeks of 3,500 American Marines arriving in Vietnam, a 39-year-old Briton named Larry Burrows began work on a feature for LIFE magazine, chronicling the day-to-day experience of U.S. troops on the ground – and in the air – in the midst of the rapidly widening war. The photographs in this gallery focus on a calamitous March 31, 1965, helicopter mission; Burrows’ “report from Da Nang”, featuring his pictures and his personal account of the harrowing operation, was published two weeks later as a now-famous cover story in the April 16, 1965, issue of LIFE.

Photo: Man your battle stations: The crew chief of helicopter Yankee Papa 13, lance corporal James C. Farley, mans an M-60 machine gun during a mission near Da Nang, Vietnam on March 31, 1965. (Photo by Larry Burrows/Time & Life Pictures)

UConn students from Storrs, Conn., Gary Tu, Danny Wang and Victor Zheng, fish at Shenipsit Lake in Tolland, Conn. during sunset on Tuesday, August 19, 2014. (Photo by Jim Michaud/AP Photo/Journal Inquirer)

Young Buddhist novice monks play at a Tibetan nomadic summer grazing area on July 24, 2015 on the Tibetan Plateau in Yushu County, Qinghai, China. Tibetan nomads face many challenges to their traditional way of life including political pressures, forced resettlement by China's government, climate change and rapid modernization. The Tibetan Plateau, often called “The Roof of the World”, is the world's highest and largest plateau. (Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

An Egyptian passenger sits on the locomotive of a train as it leaves Cairo train station in Egypt, Wednesday, October 14, 2015. (Photo by Amr Nabil/AP Photo)